Acting. For some its a job, others a craft and to Nicholas Cage it is a stereophonic peanut butter bowling ball waterfall because he is insane. We know the dude is crazy and thankfully he continues to new and exciting ways to prove it to us. Talking with Empire recently, he gave us some insight on how he prepared for playing Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider. He starts of with the usual method acting speech, hits you with a right jab of lunacy and BAM! Out of nowhere a left hook of 100% pure bat shit insane.

“It was the first time that I played Ghost Rider. Blaze was easy; I knew he was a man who had been living with a curse for eight years of having his head light on fire, and the tone that would take. I compared him to a cop, or a paramedic who develops a dark sense of humour to cope with the horrors he has seen. But Blaze has also caused the horrors, so he’s hiding out because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Yep, pretty much the typical. You can see any actor saying something to this effect, right? Well get ready cause he is about to go full on Nic Cage after the jump.

“Ghost Rider was an entirely new experience, and he got me thinking about something I read in a book called The Way Of Wyrd by Brian Bates, and he also wrote a book called The Way Of The Actor. He put forth the concept that all actors, whether they know it or not, stem from thousands of years ago—pre-Christian times—when they were the medicine men or shamans of the village. And these shamans, who by today’s standards would be considered psychotic, were actually going into flights of the imagination and locating answers to problems within the village. They would use masks or rocks or some sort of magical object that had power to it.”

Toot Toot, all aboard the crazy train to kookooville.

“It occurred to me, because I was doing a character as far out of our reference point as the spirit of vengeance, I could use these techniques. I would paint my face with black and white make up to look like a Afro-Caribbean icon called Baron Samedi, or an Afro-New Orleans icon who is also called Baron Saturday. He is a spirit of death but he loves children; he’s very lustful, so he’s a conflict in forces. And I would put black contact lenses in my eyes so that you could see no white and no pupil, so I would look more like a skull or a white shark on attack.”

What. Da. Fuck.

“On my costume, my leather jacket, I would sew in ancient, thousands-of-years-old Egyptian relics, and gather bits of tourmaline and onyx and would stuff them in my pockets to gather these energies together and shock my imagination into believing that I was augmented in some way by them, or in contact with ancient ghosts. I would walk on the set looking like this, loaded with all these magical trinkets, and I wouldn’t say a word to my co-stars or crew or directors. I saw the fear in their eyes, and it was like oxygen to a forest fire. I believed I was the Ghost Rider.”

I can’t even begin to process what he just said. All I can do is sit here and stare at the words and wonder how the interview must have felt… as he slowly backed out the door. Don’t look him in the eyes, he will take that as a challenge.

In less crazy news, a whole ass load of stills from Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance just hit the net. 76 in total!

There’s three of them, you can check out the other 72 pics on Kinopoisk.ru. Hey it’s Friday, you ain’t working to hard either.

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance hits screens on the 17th of February, go see it or Nic Cage will magic your ass into the theater.

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